When you think of an art gallery, you're likely picturing a stylish room full of paintings and sculptures in the heart of a city's artsy downtown, somewhere where people can gather and look at art and maybe sip a glass of wine.
But the last place you'd expect an art gallery? In the middle of the Utah desert, 125 miles from Salt Lake City. The actual middle of nowhere.
However, you'd be wrong. There is an art gallery out there, and it's nothing like anything you've ever seen!
The place is called Nine Mile Canyon, a long (it's actually 40 miles long) canyon in the reddish rocks of Utah's expansive and beautiful desert.
It would be breathtaking on its own with its rugged rock formations, but it's also full of art. Miles and miles of art. So much, in fact, that it's been nicknamed the "world's longest art gallery."
The art dates back to a thousand years ago, and there are some 10,000 individual images in the canyon. There are also shelters, storage areas, and irrigation ditches, all left by an ancient culture that lived in and around the canyon centuries ago.
And like the Nazca Lines of Peru, they show us a glimpse of a world lost to history.
Check out some of the amazing ancient art of Nine Mile Canyon and add it to your vacation wish list!
[H/T: Atlas Obscura]
Nine Mile Canyon is located in Carbon and Duchesne counties in Utah, and in spite of its name, it's actually about 40 miles long, and full of amazing ancient art and artifacts.
There are some 10,000 images in this canyon, mainly created by an ancient agricultural culture that lived here as far back as 2,000 years ago.
Their real name or names have been lost to us, but they're now known as the Fremont Culture.
They created these images of humans and animals on the walls of the canyon.
This scene, known as the Cottonwood Panel, depicts a large hunt and is one of the most famous and striking sites in the canyon.
The images were created by chipping away at the darker outer layer of the stone to reveal the lighter layer underneath.
The Fremont culture depicted local wildlife as well as humans, and it seems that stick figures haven't changed much over the millennia!
By the 1500s, the Fremont people were mainly gone, and the Ute people had moved in.
The name "Utah" comes from the Ute and means "people of the mountains."
The Ute created their own art alongside the Fremont art, as did white settlers later. You can see writing from the 1800s neck to an ancient pictograph in this photo.
We don't know the exact reasons that these images were created. They may have been commemorative, or religious, or perhaps just purely decorative.
And naturally, there are some fringe theories involving ancient aliens!
But whatever the reason, Nine Mile Canyon is popular with tourists as well as for business, especially after the discovery of natural gas reserves.
The Bureau of Land Management has listed it on the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Besides rock art, Nine Mile Canyon also features houses, shelters, and storage buildings used by the Fremont and Ute people, and show us a little about their ways of life.
While it looks majestic and mysterious, dust like this, kicked up by both industrial and tourist vehicles, can damage the rock art.
To reduce the dust, Carbon County paved the canyon's dirt road, and works to keep the dust down, as well as to educate visitors to not touch the rock art.
You can learn more about this special place on the Bureau of Land Management's website and on other tourist sites, too.
And if you know someone who loves discovering hidden gems like this, SHARE this amazing piece of American history with them!
